RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)


  • Nothing Special About April 15 — Every Day is Tax Day

    Source: Garrison Center
    by Thomas L Knapp

    “The deadline for filing US federal income tax returns falls (usually) on April 15, a date that’s worked its way into the American vocabulary as ‘tax day.’ That’s really not a very accurate term. For one thing, most Americans pay all sorts of other taxes (sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes, etc.) all the time. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a tax … and there’s probably a tax on swinging cats, which I recommend against doing for all kinds of reasons other than potential tax implications. For another, most Americans pay federal income tax year-round through withholding from their paychecks (or quarterly ‘estimated’ payments). April 15 is just the day when the government demands that you do their paperwork for them to make sure they took as much as they wanted to take from you last year.” (04/14/26)

    https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20539

  • The Art of Failure

    Source: Antiwar.com
    by Kyle Anzalone

    “Donald Trump sold himself to the American people as the ultimate dealmaker during his first run for President. He argued that Obama’s poor negotiating skills had impoverished the American people, and he would Make America Great Again by getting tough with both allies and adversaries. The American people bought the narrative and elected him over Hillary Clinton in 2016. In the President’s five years in office, he had been unable to cement any agreement that benefited Americans. … It should come as no surprise that Saturday’s talks in Pakistan to end the conflict failed. Trump has proven he is unable to take a good deal when it is gifted to him.” (04/14/26)

    https://original.antiwar.com/kyle_anzalone/2026/04/13/the-art-of-failure

  • Bootleggers, Baptists, and Others Who Benefit From Tax Complexity

    Source: The Daily Economy
    by Julia R Cartwright

    “To understand the American tax code, you first need to understand a theory developed while watching liquor regulations in the American South. Economist Bruce Yandle noticed that two groups supported Sunday alcohol bans: Baptist ministers, who wanted to protect communities from drinking, and bootleggers, who wanted to eliminate their competition for a day. The two groups had different motives, but pushed for the same policy. Yandle called this dynamic ‘bootleggers and Baptists,’ and it helps explain nearly every major provision in the US tax code.” (04/14/26)

    https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/bootleggers-baptists-and-who-benefits-from-tax-complexity/

  • Trump risks war backlash from the heartland: American farmers

    Source: Responsible Statecraft
    by Blaise Malley

    “Even if Gulf shipping reopens tomorrow, supply lags and energy costs are driving fertilizer and other input costs sky high — just in time for planting season.” (04/14/26)

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/strait-of-hormuz-fertilizer/

  • The Critical Issue Is Not Dependence on Oil, but the Destruction Caused by States

    Source: Ludwig Mises Institute
    by Alejandro A Tagliavini

    “We have long normalized the idea that economics is the use of scarce resources. The problem is that, if resources are scarce, the only option left is to decide how to allocate them, leading to a real struggle — sometimes violent — between the parties to see who gets what little there is. … Creation is infinite; it has no limits as long as the order of the cosmos—the order of nature that predates humankind — is respected. In contrast, rationalism, state constructivism, and attempts to impose an ‘order’ that — not arising spontaneously from society — must be coercively imposed using the monopoly on violence that states claim for this purpose clashes with social nature and enters into a conflict that only destroys.” (04/14/26)

    https://mises.org/power-market/critical-issue-not-dependence-oil-destruction-caused-states

  • Eric Swalwell’s enablers knew the truth, and protected him anyway

    Source: Fox News
    by Jonathan Turley

    “The resignation of Rep. Eric Swalwell [D-CA] came with one of the most spectacular falls in political history. Just days ago, Swalwell was the leading Democratic candidate for governor of California and positioned to be one of two final candidates, with the other a Republican. He expected that, regardless of his unpopularity, California Democrats would never vote for a Republican. Now Swalwell has pulled out of the race, left Congress, and was even tossed out of the home of a billionaire who had been letting him crash there during the scandal. Swalwell continues to deny the allegations against him and has pledged to fight them. For the record, I have been one of Swalwell’s most vocal critics for the last 10 years. Yet while I am not surprised by the allegations, I am surprised by how quickly Swalwell was abandoned by his political patrons in Congress and the unions.” (04/14/26)

    https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jonathan-turley-eric-swalwells-enablers-knew-truth-protected-anyway

  • What the Economic Report of the President Gets Wrong and Right About Housing Supply

    Source: Cato Institute
    by Stephen Slivinski

    “Yesterday, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers issued its annual Economic Report of the President. Like every year, it’s a wide-ranging analysis of several hot-button economic topics. While I can’t speak to the reliability of the analysis in every chapter, one thing that stands out is the chapter on housing supply. Like any policy document written by committee and expected to rationalize even the least justifiable policies of an administration, it doesn’t get everything right. Yet it doesn’t get everything wrong either.” (04/14/26)

    https://www.cato.org/blog/what-economic-report-president-gets-wrong-right-about-housing-supply

  • Trump’s crusade against the Vatican

    Source: spiked
    by Georgina Mumford

    “Trump is not the first president to fall out with the Holy Father. That said, this latest outburst is worlds away from the ‘elegant row’ between Theodore Roosevelt and Pope Pius during the Second World War, or the cordial scolding given to Bill Clinton by Pope John Paul over abortion legislation. Trump’s tantrum comes after months of tension between the White House and the Holy See – where, much to his dismay, religious officials have failed to don their MAGA hats and cheer on America’s war with Iran. … American Catholics – who comprise both 20 per cent of the US population and 22 per cent of those who cast their vote for Trump in 2024 – will no doubt be baffled by Trump’s attacks on the pontiff. Moreover, his AI-powered Jesus impersonation managed to upset even the most enthusiastic of evangelical MAGA loyalists.” (04/14/26)

    https://archive.is/E05Rd

  • Fifteen Bucks a Signature: The Crisis of Money in US Politics Is Growing

    Source: The Nation
    by Katrina Vanden Heuvel

    “There’s money to be made in California this spring, no start-up pitch or buzzy screenplay required. Instead, signatures are one of the state’s most coveted commodities: Campaigns are paying $15 apiece to those willing to collect them. Petition distributors can thank Sergey Brin for this pay bump. In an effort to kill California’s proposed billionaire tax, the Google cofounder and other local tycoons are funding a political group that has hiked the going rate for signatures collected in support of countermeasures. In all, foes of the wealth tax are expected to spend $75 million in their attempt to quash the proposal.” (04/14/26)

    https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/money-in-politics-billionaires-dark-money-citizens-united-crisis/

  • Evolution Explains the Human Condition

    Source: Persuasion
    by Steven Pinker

    “In March 2026, three prominent thinkers died within a day of each other. Lavish obituaries immediately marked the deaths of the always-wrong environmentalist Paul Ehrlich and the often-obscure political philosopher Jürgen Habermas. But for two weeks after the death of Robert Trivers, one of the greatest evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin, not a single major news source had noticed his passing. This despite Trivers’s singular accomplishment of showing how the endlessly fascinating complexities of human relations are grounded in the wellsprings of complex life. And despite the fact that the man’s life was itself an object of fascination. Trivers was no ordinary academic. He was privileged in upbringing but louche in lifestyle, personally endearing but at times obstreperous and irresponsible, otherworldly brilliant but forehead-slappingly foolish.” (04/14/26)

    https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-strange-ways-people-actand-how

  • Douglass Rejected That Black Gratitude to Lincoln Required Jingoistic Praise

    Source: The UnPopulist
    by Jonathan Marks

    “On the Emancipation Memorial’s 150th anniversary, Douglass’ oration needs rescuing from both left and right.” (04/14/26)

    https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/douglass-rejected-that-black-gratitude

  • 48-Hour Hold-Up

    Source: The Pamphleteer
    by Megan Podsiedlik

    “Today [Tuesday], the Tennessee senate will weigh in on a bill requiring local law enforcement agencies participating in the 287(g) program to honor ICE detainers. Under the proposal, participating local law enfocement agencies would be required to hold individuals subject to an immigration detainer for up to 48 hours, giving federal officials time to assume custody. Lay of the Land According to Tennessee’s new Centralized Immigration Enforcement Division, only 49 of the state’s 95 counties now participate in the 287(g) program.” [editor’s note: “Detainers” shouldn’t be honored. If ICE wants someone, ICE should go to an actual judge and get an actual warrant – TLK] (04/13/26)

    https://pamphleteer.co/newsletter/48-hour-hold-up/

  • How Belief in Hell Makes Suffering Easier to Ignore

    Source: Roads Go Ever On
    by Bekah Graham

    “If you believe someone’s worst possible fate is eternal, then nothing happening to them now can ever feel as urgent.” (04/14/26)

    https://bekahgwen.substack.com/p/how-belief-in-hell-makes-suffering

  • The Danger of Allowing Good Intentions to Override the Constitution

    Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute

    “Walter E. Williams often made the point that a policy should be judged by whether it works, not by its good intentions. This warning is especially important because politicians are experts at declaring good intentions. If we judge them by their stated intentions alone, when their schemes end in disaster they could simply remind us that they meant well. Unfortunately, Professor Williams’s warnings went unheeded. In their book Who Killed The Constitution, Thomas E. Woods and Kevin R.C. Gutzman make a very similar argument about the irrelevance of good intentions.” (04/14/26)

    https://mises.org/mises-wire/danger-allowing-good-intentions-override-constitution

  • Right-wing Hypocrisy on Cuban and Venezuelan Socialism

    Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
    by Jacob G Hornberger

    “On seeing the deep economic suffering of the Cuban people, who are now on the precipice of massive death by starvation and illness, American right-wingers love to blame Cuban socialism for what is occurring. They say that it’s not really the U.S. economic embargo that has played a critically important role in all this. And, they claim, it’s not President Trump’s and the U.S. national-security state’s oil blockade that has put the finishing touches on this horror story. The U.S. role in all this death and suffering is non-existent, the right-wingers steadfastly maintain. It’s all because of Cuba’s socialist economic system. A big part of the problem here is the moral blindness of the American right-wing when it comes to the U.S. government and, specifically, the U.S. national-security establishment.” (04/14/26)

    https://www.fff.org/2026/04/14/right-wing-hypocrisy-on-cuban-and-venezuelan-socialism/